The “Do Something” Syndrome of American Foreign Policy – An Interview with Dr. James Joyner

Last week, the final brigade of US combat troops left Iraq. This struck me as fairly major news despite being largely overshadowed by the current Park51 controversy. It also gave me a good reason to contact James Joyner to talk about his take on the departure and American foreign policy/military force more generally.

For those unfamiliar with Dr. Joyner, he is the Managing Editor of the Atlantic Council, an organization that, “promotes constructive U.S. leadership and engagement in international affairs based on the central role of the Atlantic community in meeting the international challenges of the 21st century.” Dr. Joyner is also the founder and Editor in Chief of the popular website Outside the Beltway.

Dr. Joyner founded OTB on January 31, 2003 and was its sole author until November 2004. OTB has since evolved into OTB Media, a collection of weblogs with over two dozen contributors. Dr. Joyner also hosts a weekly radio program for BlogTalkRadio.

Dr. Joyner has published academic articles in International Studies Quarterly and Strategic Insights; five book reviews; fourteen encyclopedia articles; over two dozen conference papers; and over three dozen magazine columns for Tech Central Station/TCS Daily, Reason, Legal Affairs, Human Events, and The Washington Examiner. A more-or-less complete listing can be found here.

Additionally, Dr. Joyner served in the U.S. Army from 1988 to 1992 and is a combat veteran of Operation Desert Storm. He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal, the Army Commendation Medal, and numerous service medals and ribbons. He is a graduate of the Airborne and Air Assault schools.

He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Alabama (1995) and B.A. (1987) and M.A. (1988) degrees in Political Science from Jacksonville State University.

Needless to say, this all places Dr. Joyner in a unique position to reflect on Iraq and American foreign policy more generally. I am genuinely appreciative that he was able to take time out of his busy schedule to trade emails with me.

Scott: Very recently, the last US combat brigade left Iraq, marking a substantial milestone to the end of the more than seven year US incursion in the country. Given what a prominent factor the war has played in American politics and life in recent history, you would think that this marker would be a fairly major event. And yet, one gets the sense that it is going to pass by relatively unnoticed by a majority of Americans. Why do you think that is?

Dr. Joyner: I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot, in that I’ve been part of the national trend. The thing that got me noticed on OTB seven-odd years ago was my coverage of the tail end of the Iraq War debate and its early years. Discussion of the war was easily my most prolific subject for the first four years or so blogging. But I’ve hardly paid attention the last 18 months to two years.

Essentially, it went from being an engaging story with a dramatic plot to a mere routine. Following the so-called Surge — for a whole lot of reasons only tangentially connected to it — things got better. Instead of losing 800- or 900-plus soldiers a year, as we did from 2004 to 2007, we lost 314 in 2008, 149 in 2009, and 45 this year.

That’s a good thing! And, certainly, we’re drawing down to a much better outcome than any of us could have expected in 2006. But, alas, at a much higher cost in blood and treasure and with a whole lot less Shining Example For The Region than we’d hoped in the giddy days of 2004. So, we have less “news” to talk about but, at the same time, no “victory” to crow about.

Presumably, the reverse is true from the side of those who opposed the war: Things turned out better than we feared but there’s no steady stream of casualties to point to as vindication for how bad it all is. And, of course, Bush is gone.

Also, of course, Afghanistan has become the hot war, both in terms of a boom in American casualties and in exciting political clashes to write about.

Scott: Have the results to which you point changed your initial perspective on the decision to become involved in the region?

Dr. Joyner: I did a Reverse John Kerry on Iraq: I was against it before I was for it. During the early stages of the debate, as late as the fall of 2002, I thought intervening was crazy. None of the rationales offered — Saddam was evil, he’d used chemical weapons on his own people, etc. — struck me as justifications for war.

My view shifted upon the announcement of North Korea having produced a nuclear weapon and the immediate shift in the policy debate on the Peninsula that it created. Suddenly, conventional options were off the table and our options vis-a-vis Kim’s regime became incredibly limited. That convinced me that the time to take out Saddam, before he got to a similar position of impunity, had arrived.

Even at that point, my war aims were quite limited and I assumed that the lofty rhetoric about democracy that Bush was using was just the standard rah-rah that presidents, including his father, use when rallying Americans for war. Even in hindsight, having read COBRA II and FIASCO, it’s pretty clear that Rumsfeld’s Pentagon was under that impression, too: They were planning to execute a regime change and a handover, not hang around for the better part of a decade transforming a political culture.

That view of the mission was doubtless naive. And maybe it wasn’t feasible even aside from Bush’s intent. But I have no regrets about taking out Saddam and his progeny. The world is a better place without them and America’s security interests in the region are enhanced and, in the longer term, so is the life of the average Iraqi.

But the cost of the follow-on mission, and the inept way it was handled, have been high. We’ve lost 4415 killed and nearly 32,000 have been wounded — almost all of them since the infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner was flown after the initial mission was achieved and major combat operations “ended.” Moreover, some 100,000 Iraqis have been killed. And that’s not to mention the damage the war has had on our relations with our allies and our standing in the world.

Knowing all that I know now, would I have backed the mission? No. The cost was too high compared to what was gained. But I’d still take an Iraq free of Saddam and his sons for the six weeks and 179 KIA it cost to achieve that.

Scott: Many folks, some liberal and some conservative, have pointed to the insights you mention as a turning point in understanding the role of American military capacities in geo-political foreign policy. The natural and necessary conclusion being a humbling towards the limitations of those capacities. And during the course of the 2008 presidential election, with opposition to Iraq as a cornerstone of his campaign, many if those same people saw Barack Obama as a harbinger of those lessons.

Now that Obama has taken office, aside from an initial diplomatic stiff-arm to Israel and a token friendly video address to Iran, there is a sense that those lessons have fallen by the wayside and that nothing much has changed. That when it comes to foreign policy, an area in which he has near total control, Barack Obama has cashed out as almost indistinguishable from any other American president. And all this in spite of ample evidence of the a desperate need for course correction.

Does that strike you as a fair criticism?

Dr. Joyner: I’m not sure it’s even a criticism, much less an unfair one. American presidents inherit the same pressures, institutions, and expectations. And, as Matt Yglesias has articulated quite well in HEADS IN THE SAND, Democratic presidents have, since at least Jimmy Carter, faced the additional pressure of needing to prove themselves “strong” on matters of national security. Given that, I predicted a relatively seamless transition in our foreign policy from Bush to Obama.

The irony is that, in the recent past at least, the party outside the White House invariably criticizes the in-party’s use of military force. Carter was lampooned as weak for his tepid and impotent response to the Iran Hostage Crisis. Reagan was considered a cowboy and his invasions of Lebanon and Grenada were criticized. Bush Sr’s wars in Panama and Southwest Asia were controversial but popular, but his tough policy toward the Haitian refugees and soft policy toward China were criticized by Clinton — who promptly adopted the same policies. And, of course, George W. Bush campaigned on a humble foreign policy that would eschew nation-building.

Because of our status as the lone remaining superpower, American presidents face what Don Snow has termed the “Do Something Syndrome.” And, at the end of the day, deploying the 82nd Airborne tends to quickly emerge as the most attractive option. We’ve got a massive, superbly trained and equipped force that the president can order out on a whim.

There’s a saying in military circles that there are no Lessons Learned, merely Lessons Identified. It appears to apply to politicians and military power as well as to the military itself. You’d think that we’d have learned the dangers of intervening in other countries’ civil wars with Vietnam. Instead, that lesson was pronounced a “syndrome” from which we needed recover. Desert Storm was that recovery, demonstrating that war was quick, easy, satisfying, and immensely entertaining. But it was soon followed by the Somalia debacle, where a decently executed humanitarian relief mission transmogrified into a pathetic exercise in warlord chasing and the infamous Blackhawk Down fiasco. That didn’t stop us from engaging in kinetic operations in another dozen or so places during the remainder of the Clinton administration — most of them reasonably successful and painless. And, while many Republicans — myself included — opposed these operations, a large number cheered them on and chided Clinton for being too weak in his responses to Bosnia, Kosovo, and Rwanda. Indeed, Clinton maintains to this day that our failure to step in and stop a massacre we likely couldn’t have stopped is his greatest regret. And, of course, we all know how Bush’s humble, nation-building-free tenure turned out.

As for myself, I maintain that military force is one of the tools in our diplomatic arsenal and one that we shouldn’t shy away from using. But I think the bar should be high and the aims should be surgical. I much prefer the much maligned Wack-a-Mole strategy to long-term occupations. We’re extraordinarily good at breaking things and killing people. Not so much creating democracies in places that have never had and don’t want them. And “winning hearts and minds” is seldom achieved at the barrel of a gun.

Scott: So are you advocating a return to the Powell Doctrine of military force?

Dr. Joyner: Essentially, yes. We’re been especially bad at having a clearly articulated set of objectives and corresponding exist strategy.

More fundamentally, though, we have to understand that even the world’s most capable military can only do so much. War isn’t the answer to every national security question.

Scott: So then, how would your take on the appropriate use of military force and foreign relations apply to a perceived security threat like, say, Iran?

Dr. Joyner: I’ve got no moral objections to a precision strike on Iran’s governmental or military facilities. They’re in violation of umpteen UN Security Council resolutions and international law. Further, a nuclear Iran is dangerous and avoiding same is in the vital security interests of the United States.

The problem, however, is that, with the notable exception of Chuck Wald, I’ve seen no credible evidence that a military strike could achieve or political objectives and plenty of expert analysis saying we’d do ourselves more harm than good. Given the lack of good options, then, we’re going to have to find a way to accommodate ourselves to an unpleasant reality.

Again, not every overseas situation that we don’t like has a military solution.

Scott: Given that almost any situation one chooses to analyze these days is likely to have some considerable down side, how do you avoid accidentally slipping into an isolationist/anti-interventionist frame while still maintaining the high bar you previously referenced in regards to decision to use force?

Dr. Joyner: You have to do expected utility analysis which, again, requires a concrete political objective around which to build military strategy. More often than not, we’ll find that the likelihood of achieving our goals is too small for the cost in blood and treasure.

I’m not sure why anti-interventionism would be a bad thing. Indeed, our default position ought to be that things going on inside other countries that don’t significantly impact us are none of our business, much less cause to scramble the 7th Fleet.

Further, even if we somehow managed to avoid shooting wars for a number of years, we’d hardly be an isolationist power. We’re inextricably linked with most of the world in terms of commerce and communications.

Scott: I’m inclined to agree with you that an anti-interventionist position wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Moreover, it strikes me that as public opinion on Afghanistan continues to sour, there are an increasing number of Americans finding themselves on the same page.

But given the dynamics you previously described, it seems unlikely that American foreign policy is going to wind up on that trajectory any time soon. What do you think it would take to generate enough both widespread and beltway support to make such an approach politically feasible?

Dr. Joyner: It doesn’t seem likely. We seem to have a bipartisan elite consensus that “doing something” is good and, as discussed, that “something” almost always involves sending in the cavalry.

This is, alas, the most important downside to the otherwise unalloyed good of the decision to shift to an all-volunteer military in 1973. Because everyone who gets sent into harm’s way is a volunteer — and, naturally, a hero — it’s much, much harder to rally the public mobilization that we had at the height of the Vietnam War, when draftees were doing the dying.

Tagged as: American foreign policy, anti-interventionism, Dr. James Joyner, Iran, Iraq, Outside the Beltway, Powell Doctrine, the atlantic council, use of force